Cowboy Boots

Cowboy boots arrived in the American West from Mexico, and they had been
brought to Mexico by the Spanish horsemen who conquered that country. With
sharply pointed toes and a high, angled heel, usually from one-and-a-half
to two-and-a-half inches high, the tall leather boots slid easily into
stirrups and hooked there when a horseman had to stand up in the saddle to
rope cows. Early cowboy boots were difficult to walk in, because they were
designed for use on horseback. However, even after cars and trucks
replaced horses for transportation and work in the West, cowboy boots
remained the footwear of choice, becoming a symbol of identity for
westerners. In western states cowboy boots are even commonly worn with
business suits. The forty-third U.S. president, George W. Bush
(1946–), who came from Texas, favored cowboy boots for casual as
well as more formal attire.

During the 1940s cowboy boots were in fashion for a brief time, thanks to
the popularity of western films at the time, but it was the 1980 film
Urban Cowboy
that made cowboy boots fashionable street wear worldwide. Both women and
men wore cowboy boots, because they seemingly portrayed a tough, masculine
image yet were highly decorative. In the United States, cowboy boots
became part of a nostalgic celebration of American pride, while in Europe
and Asia people wore cowboy boots as a symbol of their adoption of
American styles. The prime time soap opera
Dallas,
which aired on CBS from 1978 to 1991, also helped spread the popularity
of the cowboy look, including, of course, stitched-leather, pointy-toed
cowboy boots.

Though cowboy boots have remained popular in the American West, their
popularity throughout the rest of the world had faded by the 1990s.
However, the twenty-first century has seen a revival of the fashion for
cowboy boots, especially in Europe, with designer boots made in bright
colors, such as pink and turquoise, and using such nontraditional
materials as fake fur and sequins.